This paper has several original contributions. The first is to employ a superior
interpolation method that enables to estimate, nowcast and forecast monthly Brazilian
GDP for 1980-2012 in an integrated way; see Bernanke, Gertler and Watson (1997,
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity). Second, along the spirit of Mariano and
Murasawa (2003, Journal of Applied Econometrics), we propose and test a myriad of
interpolation models and interpolation auxiliary series- all coincident with GDP from
a business-cycle dating point of view. Based on these results, we finally choose the most
appropriate monthly indicator for Brazilian GDP. Third, this monthly GDP estimate
is compared to an economic activity indicator widely used by practitioners in Brazil
- the Brazilian Economic Activity Index - (IBC-Br). We found that the our monthly
GDP tracks economic activity better than IBC-Br. This happens by construction,
since our state-space approach imposes the restriction (discipline) that our monthly
estimate must add up to the quarterly observed series in any given quarter, which
may not hold regarding IBC-Br. Moreover, our method has the advantage to be easily
implemented: it only requires conditioning on two observed series for estimation...

This paper has several original contributions. The rst is to employ a superior
interpolation method that enables to estimate, nowcast and forecast monthly Brazilian
GDP for 1980-2012 in an integrated way; see Bernanke, Gertler and Watson (1997,
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity). Second, along the spirit of Mariano and
Murasawa (2003, Journal of Applied Econometrics), we propose and test a myriad of
interpolation models and interpolation auxiliary series all coincident with GDP from
a business-cycle dating point of view. Based on these results, we nally choose the most
appropriate monthly indicator for Brazilian GDP. Third, this monthly GDP estimate
is compared to an economic activity indicator widely used by practitioners in Brazil
- the Brazilian Economic Activity Index - (IBC-Br). We found that the our monthly
GDP tracks economic activity better than IBC-Br. This happens by construction,
since our state-space approach imposes the restriction (discipline) that our monthly
estimate must add up to the quarterly observed series in any given quarter, which
may not hold regarding IBC-Br. Moreover, our method has the advantage to be easily
implemented: it only requires conditioning on two observed series for estimation...

The main purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that the relationship between per-capita sales and per-capita GDP is given by an inverted U. The paper considers that lottery sales increase together with increases in GDP up to a point where a country has reached a level at which the GDP is high enough and lottery sales become an inferior good and as a result, start to decrease. As there are other determinants of the expenditure on lottery products, the paper introduces into the regression analysis other explanatory factors as control variables. The paper uses a cross-country regression, using 2004 data for 80 countries. The results confirm the hypothesis, in addition to yielding other interesting findings: countries with higher levels of education sell fewer lottery products; lottery sales increase together with increases in the male to female ratio.

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics; Predicting GDP growth is a concern of several economic agents. The right way to model such variable is far from consensual. This paper’s goal is to compare different models for GDP growth forecasting in the euro area. For comparative purposes, an autoregressive model (which is used as benchmark) and two Autoregressive Distributed Models (ADL), which contain financial and non-financial variables, chosen based on the literature, are used. The main conclusion is that the ADL(2,1,1) considered has superior forecast performance in- and out-of-sample, although in this last case depending on the evaluation metric.

We have studied the binding of guanyl nucleotides to retinal rod outer segment membranes to determine how light activates a cyclic GMP phosphodiesterase and a GTPase. We found that rod outer segment membranes contain tightly bound radioactive GDP after incubation in the dark with [3H]GDP or [alpha-32P]GTP. Reconstituted membranes containing only rhodopsin and phospholipid bind almost no GDP. More than 80% of the radioactive GDP bound to rod outer segment membranes could be released by subsequent illumination. At low light levels, the rate and extent of GDP release were markedly enhanced by the presence of GTP or p[NH]ppG, a nonhydrolyzable analog of GTP. The kinetics of binding of p[NH]ppG paralleled the kinetics of release of bound GDP, indicating that p[NH]ppG was exchanged for bound GDP. The maximal amount of bound p[NH]ppG was 1 per 30 rhodopsins when photolyzed membranes were incubated with 10 micro M nucleotide. Under these conditions, p[NH]ppG binding was half-maximal when only 1 in 90,000 rhodopsins was photolyzed. This corresponds to the catalyzed exchange of 500 p[NH]ppG for bound GDP per photolyzed rhodopsin. We propose a light-activated GTP-GDP amplification cycle involving a guanyl nucleotide binding protein with GTPase activity (E). The essence of this cycle is that photolyzed rhodopsin catalyzes the formation of E . GTP from E . GDP (the major species in the dark) by nucleotide exchange. The formation of several hundred E . GTP per photolyzed rhodopsin may be the first stage of amplification in visual excitation.

Ran-GTP interacts strongly with importin-β, and this interaction promotes the release of the importin-α-nuclear localization signal cargo from importin-β. Ran-GDP also interacts with importin-β, but this interaction is 4 orders of magnitude weaker than the Ran-GTP·importin-β interaction. Here we use the yeast complement of nuclear import proteins to show that the interaction between Ran-GDP and importin-β promotes the dissociation of GDP from Ran. The release of GDP from the Ran-GDP-importin-β complex stabilizes the complex, which cannot be dissociated by importin-α. Although Ran has a higher affinity for GDP compared with GTP, Ran in complex with importin-β has a higher affinity for GTP. This feature is responsible for the generation of Ran-GTP from Ran-GDP by importin-β. Ran-binding protein-1 (RanBP1) activates this reaction by forming a trimeric complex with Ran-GDP and importin-β. Importin-α inhibits the GDP exchange reaction by sequestering importin-β, whereas RanBP1 restores the GDP nucleotide exchange by importin-β by forming a tetrameric complex with importin-β, Ran, and importin-α. The exchange is also inhibited by nuclear-transport factor-2 (NTF2). We suggest a mechanism for nuclear import, additional to the established RCC1 (Ran-guanine exchange factor)-dependent pathway that incorporates these results.

The plant VTC2 gene encodes GDP-l-galactose phosphorylase, a rate-limiting enzyme in plant vitamin C biosynthesis. Genes encoding apparent orthologs of VTC2 exist in both mammals, which produce vitamin C by a distinct metabolic pathway, and in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans where vitamin C biosynthesis has not been demonstrated. We have now expressed cDNAs of the human and worm VTC2 homolog genes (C15orf58 and C10F3.4, respectively) and found that the purified proteins also display GDP-hexose phosphorylase activity. However, as opposed to the plant enzyme, the major reaction catalyzed by these enzymes is the phosphorolysis of GDP-d-glucose to GDP and d-glucose 1-phosphate. We detected activities with similar substrate specificity in worm and mouse tissue extracts. The highest expression of GDP-d-glucose phosphorylase was found in the nervous and male reproductive systems. A C. elegans C10F3.4 deletion strain was found to totally lack GDP-d-glucose phosphorylase activity; this activity was also found to be decreased in human HEK293T cells transfected with siRNAs against the human C15orf58 gene. These observations confirm the identification of the worm C10F3.4 and the human C15orf58 gene expression products as the GDP-d-glucose phosphorylases of these organisms. Significantly...

Coxiella burnetii, the etiologic agent of human Q fever, is a Gram-negative and naturally obligate intracellular bacterium. The O-specific polysaccharide chain (O-PS) of the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of C. burnetii is considered a heteropolymer of the two unusual sugars β-D-virenose and dihydrohydroxystreptose and mannose. We hypothesize that GDP-D-mannose is a metabolic intermediate to GDP-β-D-virenose. GDP-D-mannose is synthesized from fructose-6-phosphate in 3 successive reactions; Isomerization to mannose-6-phosphate catalyzed by a phosphomannose isomerase (PMI), followed by conversion to mannose-1-phosphate mediated by a phosphomannomutase (PMM) and addition of GDP by a GDP-mannose pyrophosphorylase (GMP). GDP-D-mannose is then likely converted to GDP-6-deoxy-D-lyxo-hex-4-ulopyranose (GDP-Sug), a virenose intermediate, by a GDP-mannose-4,6-dehydratase (GMD). To test the validity of this pathway in C. burnetii, three open reading frames (CBU0671, CBU0294 and CBU0689) annotated as bifunctional type II PMI, as PMM or GMD were functionally characterized by complementation of corresponding E. coli mutant strains and in enzymatic assays. CBU0671, failed to complement an Escherichia coli manA (PMM) mutant strain. However, complementation of an E. coli manC (GMP) mutant strain restored capsular polysaccharide biosynthesis. CBU0294 complemented a Pseudomonas aeruginosa algC (GMP) mutant strain and showed phosphoglucomutase activity (PGM) in a pgm E. coli mutant strain. Despite the inability to complement a manA mutant...

GDP-mannose-3′,5′-epimerase (GME) from Arabidopsis thaliana catalyses the epimerization of both the 3′ and 5′ positions of GDP-α-d-mannose to yield GDP-β-l-galactose. Production of the C5′ epimer of GDP-α-d-mannose, GDP-β-l-gulose, has also been reported. The reaction occurs as part of vitamin C biosynthesis in plants. We have determined structures of complexes of GME with GDP-α-d-mannose, GDP-β-l-galactose and a mixture of GDP-β-l-gulose with GDP-β-l-4-keto-gulose, to resolutions varying from 2.0 Å to 1.4 Å. The enzyme has the classical extended short chain dehydratase/reductase (SDR) fold. We have confirmed that GME establishes an equilibrium between two products, GDP-β-l-galactose and GDP-β-l-gulose. The reaction proceeds by C4′ oxidation of GDP-α-d-mannose followed by epimerization of the C5′ position to give GDP-β-l-4-keto-gulose. This intermediate is either reduced to give GDP-β-l-gulose or the C3′ position is epimerized to give GDP-β-l-4-keto-galactose, then C4′ is reduced to GDP-β-l-galactose. The combination of oxidation, epimerization and reduction in a single active site is unusual. Structural analysis coupled to site directed mutagenesis suggests C145 and K217 as the acid / base pair responsible for both epimerizations. Based on the structure of the GDP-β-l-gulose/GDP-β-l-4-keto-gulose co-complex...

Notch (N) is a transmembrane receptor that mediates cell–cell interactions to determine many cell-fate decisions. N contains EGF-like repeats, many of which have an O-fucose glycan modification that regulates N-ligand binding. This modification requires GDP-l-fucose as a donor of fucose. The GDP-l-fucose biosynthetic pathways are well understood, including the de novo pathway, which depends on GDP-mannose 4,6 dehydratase (Gmd) and GDP-4-keto-6-deoxy-d-mannose 3,5-epimerase/4-reductase (Gmer). However, the potential for intercellularly supplied GDP-l-fucose and the molecular basis of such transportation have not been explored in depth. To address these points, we studied the genetic effects of mutating Gmd and Gmer on fucose modifications in Drosophila. We found that these mutants functioned cell-nonautonomously, and that GDP-l-fucose was supplied intercellularly through gap junctions composed of Innexin-2. GDP-l-fucose was not supplied through body fluids from different isolated organs, indicating that the intercellular distribution of GDP-l-fucose is restricted within a given organ. Moreover, the gap junction-mediated supply of GDP-l-fucose was sufficient to support the fucosylation of N-glycans and the O-fucosylation of the N EGF-like repeats. Our results indicate that intercellular delivery is a metabolic pathway for nucleotide sugars in live animals under certain circumstances.

Real GDP and oil prices are decomposed
into common stochastic trend and cycle processes using
structural time series models. Potential real GDP is
represented by the level of the trend component of real GDP.
The potential rate of growth of real GDP is represented by
the stochastic drift element of the trend component. Cuevas
finds that there is a strong association at the trend and
cycle frequencies between real GDP and the real price of
oil. This association is also robust in the presence of key
economic policy variables. From 1970-80, when the underlying
annual rate of increase of the real price of oil was 12
percent, the underlying annual rate of increase of potential
GDP in Venezuela was 2.6 percent. By contrast, from
1981-2000 when the underlying rate of increase of the real
price of oil was -5 percent, the underlying growth rate of
potential GDP fell 1.5 percent. However, the strength of
association between the underlying growth of oil prices and
real GDP has fallen considerably since the early 1980s,
suggesting that oil cannot be relied on as an engine for
future growth in Venezuela.

When it comes to making international comparisons of real GDP, different views, conventions and practices are still in evidence. We set out the case for using purchasing power parity (PPP) converters for this purpose, rather than conversions based on exchange rates, and give reasons for rejecting various arguments that are still widely made to the contrary. In doing so, we provide instances of the differing current practices of international agencies, and argue the case for greater uniformity and consistency on their part. We make a number of suggestions, general and specific, for improving the quality and presentation of cross-country comparative data.; The Editor of World Economics has agreed to publication by ANU eprints providing acknowledgement is made to WE (first published in World Economics, Vol. 6, Number 1, 2005).; yes

This paper has several original contributions. The rst is to employ a superior interpolation method that enables to estimate, nowcast and forecast monthly Brazilian GDP for 1980-2012 in an integrated way; see Bernanke, Gertler and Watson (1997, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity). Second, along the spirit of Mariano and Murasawa (2003, Journal of Applied Econometrics), we propose and test a myriad of interpolation models and interpolation auxiliary series all coincident with GDP from a business-cycle dating point of view. Based on these results, we nally choose the most appropriate monthly indicator for Brazilian GDP. Third, this monthly GDP estimate is compared to an economic activity indicator widely used by practitioners in Brazil- the Brazilian Economic Activity Index - (IBC-Br). We found that the our monthly GDP tracks economic activity better than IBC-Br. This happens by construction, since our state-space approach imposes the restriction (discipline) that our monthly estimate must add up to the quarterly observed series in any given quarter, whichmay not hold regarding IBC-Br. Moreover, our method has the advantage to be easily implemented: it only requires conditioning on two observed series for estimation, while estimating IBC-Br requires the availability of hundreds of monthly series. Third...

This dissertation aims to evaluate the sustainability of the industrial growth of the
states of the Northeast from 1996 to 2003. To do so, it uses the methodology of the Green
GDP, through the equation Industrial Green GDP = Gross Industrial Product (Depletion of
Mineral Resources + Environment Degradation Costs), where depletion of mineral resources
corresponds to the mineral extraction and the environment degradation costs are generated
according to the proxies of the IPPS the Industrial Pollution Projection System. The
behavior of the series leads to the possibility of a combination of growth of the industrial
product vis-à-vis a contraction of the industrial green GDP, resulting in a paradox of growth.
It is also generated an index of sustainability of the industrial activity, through the following
relation: Gross Industrial Produtc-Industrial Green GDP/Gross Industrial Product, where the
larger the gap between the gross industrial product and the green GDP, weaker is the
sustainability. The research concludes that for the Northeast, the industrial economic activity
is losing sustainability at 50% of its product.; Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Alagoas; Esta dissertação tem como objetivo avaliar a sustentabilidade do crescimento
econômico industrial dos Estados do Nordeste no período de 1996 a 2003. Para tanto...

This dissertation aims to evaluate the sustainability of the industrial growth of the
states of the Northeast from 1996 to 2003. To do so, it uses the methodology of the Green
GDP, through the equation Industrial Green GDP = Gross Industrial Product (Depletion of
Mineral Resources + Environment Degradation Costs), where depletion of mineral resources
corresponds to the mineral extraction and the environment degradation costs are generated
according to the proxies of the IPPS the Industrial Pollution Projection System. The
behavior of the series leads to the possibility of a combination of growth of the industrial
product vis-à-vis a contraction of the industrial green GDP, resulting in a paradox of growth.
It is also generated an index of sustainability of the industrial activity, through the following
relation: Gross Industrial Produtc-Industrial Green GDP/Gross Industrial Product, where the
larger the gap between the gross industrial product and the green GDP, weaker is the
sustainability. The research concludes that for the Northeast, the industrial economic activity
is losing sustainability at 50% of its product.; Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Alagoas; Esta dissertação tem como objetivo avaliar a sustentabilidade do crescimento
econômico industrial dos Estados do Nordeste no período de 1996 a 2003. Para tanto...

The two most important international databases with Portuguese GDP per capita and productivity from the 1950s onwards (GGDC and Ameco) offer two contrasting pictures of its evolution, especially during the slowdown of 1973 to the mid-1980s. The main problem is the low quality of the underlying data for population and employment. This paper offers new estimates for population and employment and recalculates GDP per capita and productivity between 1950 and 2007. Although confirming the main idea advanced in GGDC (a similar slowdown of GDP per capita and productivity), the series are different, and should be viewed as the new benchmark for the Portuguese economy

This paper investigates the causal relationship between energy consumption and real GDP in 14 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1971-2004. The results of panel co-integration tests showed that energy consumption and real GDP do not have a stable long-run equilibrium relationship. We find that for all members of the panel, there is homogenous causality from energy consumption to real GDP and vice versa. This bi-directional causality supports the feedback hypothesis.